So, does the 7950GX2 count as a single card solution?

[beggerking]

Originally posted by: Exsomnis

All the 7950GX2 does is to send two signals at 8x linkspeed through the 16x PCI-E slot, the same thing that the Dual 7800GT did. In that respect, the Dual 7800GT was actually more advanced due to it actually being a single card solution, but it had a limit on how much power could actually be put onto the board.

Since then we've already mastered dual x16 SLi on PCI-E, but because the 7950GX2 is two individual cards slapped together, it has to run both at x8 and have an in-built SLi bridge.

then why does Dual 7800GT require SLI chipset and 7950 GX2 doesn't? 7800 "look" more advanced but 7950 "is" more advanced. IMO, anycard that would fit in any single PCI-E slot board is considered a single card solution..

7950GX2 is a single PCI-E mb graphic card. looks to me NV has regained the single card crown here.

When they put two G71's on one PCB, and they probably can now that SLi technology has advanced, then they would've regained the single card crown. The 7950GX2 is amazing and unique, it's even decent value for money, but a single card it is not. Just two cards running at half bandwidth, glued together with an SLi bridge.

Stop kidding yourself, it's nothing but a marketing gimmick. Stick two mobile 512MB Geforce 7900 GO cards together, call it the first 1GB card in the world and the fastest out, and people like you will eat it up without even thinking about what it really is first.

Tell me; If ATi developed a Crossfire setup that allowed the whole signal to go through the dongle instead of the second PCI-E slot, would you call it a single card solution? No, because it wouldn't be one. Just because they're bolted together doesn't make a difference at all, it's two graphics cards.

Next you'll say that two siamese twins who share a heart are one person.

SLI bridge requires SLI controller, this one doesn't! therefore it is a single card solution.

8x vs 16x pci-e don't really affect speed..

ATI dongle. hahaha... but seriously, if ATi would do that and DOES NOT REQUIRE a CrossFire MB, then I'd call that a single card solution (provided the card doesn't run at 200 degrees and sound like 2 jet engines).

your siamese twin analogy is flawed. If you apply that analogy to Intel pentium D, you'd be in a big surprise. Pentium D may "look" like its one chip, but internally its 2 pentium chips glued together each with its seperate cache.

again, your argument is seriously flawed because you only rely on "physical characteristics" rather than the "technical " characteristics.

 

[hans007]

well i was thinking the x1900xt is pretty huge power use.


but the problem is they have a leakage problem at 90nm at high clocks. for example a x1800xt uses more than twice as much power as an x1800xl even though its only 125mhz faster (25%) + 50% faster ram.

i'd figure if ATi made a card with dual gpus clocked at lik e500mhz also it would probably still use barely more than an x1900xtx.

 

[imported_Crusader]

Of course its a single card.. it only uses 1 PCIE connector.
It doesnt even require a SLI motherboard.

Parallel processing is using in nearly every semiconductor in existence today..

It only takes up the same amount of space as a X1900XT/XTX or 7900GTX.. and those are considered single cards right?
And those cards use parallel processing to the extreme or they'd have 1 really fast pixel pipes instead of 16/24.




Now dual SLOT is a fair analysis.
Its a dual slot card, but its a single card just as the Voodoo5 5500 was and the Rage Fury Maxx was.

 

[thilanliyan]

Originally posted by: hans007
well i was thinking the x1900xt is pretty huge power use.


but the problem is they have a leakage problem at 90nm at high clocks. for example a x1800xt uses more than twice as much power as an x1800xl even though its only 125mhz faster (25%) + 50% faster ram.

i'd figure if ATi made a card with dual gpus clocked at lik e500mhz also it would probably still use barely more than an x1900xtx.

This is what I was thinking...like NVidia did with downclocked 7900s...do the same with 2 x1800/1900 GPUs...undreclock and add beefier cooling. Probably easier said than done though. And honestly, if ATI sells well performing cards for decent prices...i doubt people will be clamoring for a dual X1900 card. I'd prefer if they push the single GPU envelope.

 

[BFG10K]

In terms of hardware it's a single card (one slot, works in non-SLI motherboards, etc).

In terms of software it's two cards because the drivers react to the card like they do with two cards in SLI.

 

[Wreckage]

Originally posted by: munky
See, the term "Quad SLI" itself means that there's technically 4 video cards. The marketing f**ks spent so much effort trying to pass it off as one card, but then when asked what do you call 2 of them in SLI, they look at the picture and go "Duhhhh... ummmm... Quad SLi???"

So since you work for NVIDIA you got to define what Quad SLI means?

To me it means 4 GPU's.

It fits into one PCIe slot. It's just that simple. If there were 10 PCIe X16 slots you could use 10 of these.

 

[Wreckage]

It's funny some of the same people who are saying the 7950 is 2 cards, were saying that this card was a 2 slot solution

 

[thilanliyan]

Originally posted by: Wreckage
It's funny some of the same people who are saying the 7950 is 2 cards, were saying that this card was a 2 slot solution

That card IS a 2 slot card. 1 slot for the PCB and 1 slot for the cooler...am I missing something?? Read the Anandtech review of it...it says 1 slot for the PCB and 1 slot for the cooler...

 

[redbox]

Originally posted by: BFG10K
In terms of hardware it's a single card (one slot, works in non-SLI motherboards, etc).

In terms of software it's two cards because the drivers react to the card like they do with two cards in SLI.

That's about the best explanation I have found for the 7950GX2. Thanks BFG10K

 

[5150Joker]

Well this is a tough question, taking the square of 256 and multiplying it by 24, dividing it by the gravitational constant and finally subtracting the speed of sound (of my farts) from that value, it comes out to approximately 1.5 cards.

 

[Wreckage]

Originally posted by: thilan29

Originally posted by: Wreckage
It's funny some of the same people who are saying the 7950 is 2 cards, were saying that this card was a 2 slot solution

That card IS a 2 slot card. 1 slot for the PCB and 1 slot for the cooler...am I missing something?? Read the Anandtech review of it...it says 1 slot for the PCB and 1 slot for the cooler...

Look at the faceplate for the card. It takes 2 slots (the waterblock is kind of high) and the cooler takes up a third.

 

[thilanliyan]

Originally posted by: Wreckage

Originally posted by: thilan29

Originally posted by: Wreckage
It's funny some of the same people who are saying the 7950 is 2 cards, were saying that this card was a 2 slot solution

That card IS a 2 slot card. 1 slot for the PCB and 1 slot for the cooler...am I missing something?? Read the Anandtech review of it...it says 1 slot for the PCB and 1 slot for the cooler...

Look at the faceplate for the card. It takes 2 slots (the waterblock is kind of high) and the cooler takes up a third.

Look here at the second pic, the faceplate is different. The retail version is NOT a 3 slot solution, it's a 2 slot solution. This is from the anandtech review.

 

[Munky]

Originally posted by: Wreckage

Originally posted by: munky
See, the term "Quad SLI" itself means that there's technically 4 video cards. The marketing f**ks spent so much effort trying to pass it off as one card, but then when asked what do you call 2 of them in SLI, they look at the picture and go "Duhhhh... ummmm... Quad SLi???"

So since you work for NVIDIA you got to define what Quad SLI means?

To me it means 4 GPU's.

It fits into one PCIe slot. It's just that simple. If there were 10 PCIe X16 slots you could use 10 of these.

To me it means 4 cards. And it looks like 4 cards when configured in Quad SLI. And it acts like 2 cards from a software perspective - whatever issues and limitations affect dual cards in SLI will also affect this "single" card.

 

[Wreckage]

Originally posted by: munky

Originally posted by: Wreckage

Originally posted by: munky
See, the term "Quad SLI" itself means that there's technically 4 video cards. The marketing f**ks spent so much effort trying to pass it off as one card, but then when asked what do you call 2 of them in SLI, they look at the picture and go "Duhhhh... ummmm... Quad SLi???"

So since you work for NVIDIA you got to define what Quad SLI means?

To me it means 4 GPU's.

It fits into one PCIe slot. It's just that simple. If there were 10 PCIe X16 slots you could use 10 of these.

To me it means 4 cards. And it looks like 4 cards when configured in Quad SLI. And it acts like 2 cards from a software perspective - whatever issues and limitations affect dual cards in SLI will also affect this "single" card.

It's a matter of semantics. It looks like 4 GPUs when configured in Quad SLI and it acts like 2 GPUs from a software perspective.

The fact that it only takes up 1 PCIe slot makes it a single card no matter how many GPUs are on it.

 

[josh6079]

I think some see "card" as pcb since the word "card" implies flat, rectangular surfaces like a credit "card" etc. I see it as a two card solution, but one slot solution as well. there are two pcb's, two platforms of GPU's connected to corresponding memory chips. It is two cards put together (very closely together) and connected by a scalable link interface (SLI), its just that they don't have the traditional SLI "bridge" connecting device. It is a single "slot" card, but a double card as well IMO.

 

[Polish3d]

Originally posted by: josh6079
I think some see "card" as pcb since the word "card" implies flat, rectangular surfaces like a credit "card" etc. I see it as a two card solution, but one slot solution as well. there are two pcb's, two platforms of GPU's connected to corresponding memory chips. It is two cards put together (very closely together) and connected by a scalable link interface (SLI), its just that they don't have the traditional SLI "bridge" connecting device. It is a single "slot" card, but a double card as well IMO.

agreed... this is not an XTX killer no more than crossfire on a single card would be a faster single card design than the XTX itself.

 

[beggerking]

7950GX2 is a single slot card, double height, very much like 1900xtx

The difference is, very much like dual core CPU, where in many cases when parallelism is used, is always faster than single core CPU. 7950GX2 has 2 GPUs vs 1900xtx has 1 GPU, and coincidently, graphics parallelism much better than applications, therefore makes 7950gX2 much faster than 1900xtx.

 

[nullpointerus]

Originally posted by: munky
See, the term "Quad SLI" itself means that there's technically 4 video cards. The marketing f**ks spent so much effort trying to pass it off as one card, but then when asked what do you call 2 of them in SLI, they look at the picture and go "Duhhhh... ummmm... Quad SLi???"

If that's true, then would you call ASUS' dual 7800 card two video cards just because it uses SLI? Seems like a single PCB to me. Were the Voodoo 5500 and 6000 two-card and four-card products respectively? What about the Rage Fury MAXX?

Logically there are two video cards, but physically there is one expansion card. And if you are going to make the case that number of logical cards is the true metric, then Golgatha's argument about multicore CPUs stands, too.

I think you need to let go of the banana, munky.

 

[imported_Crusader]

As I said, parallel processing happens all the time.. has for a long time.
If you looked into the architechure of any piece of hardware, adding parallelism decreases efficiency ect.. you just dont realize its happening because you see the end product on 1 PCB or 1 CPU.

Just because you see two PCBs on a macroscopic level like in the GX2s case doesnt mean that its a 2-card solution.

If you step into that pile of doo, your dual core CPU is a "2-CPU solution".. therefore its "unfair" to compare it to a single core CPU (even though single core CPUs have tons of parallel processing within them as well).

So where do you draw the line? At what point does a card go from being a single card to a double card?

Dual cores? Dual pixel shaders? Dual pipelines?

I think the only sane answer is- "whatever AMD/Intel/NV/ATI can make function as a single device.. IS a single device".

As BFG stated very well, its a single card as it uses 1 PCIE slot and works on nonSLI motherboards.
It is seen as a dual card solution from a driver perspective.. but so is a dual or quadcore CPU.

That is, until AMD releases their reverse hyperthreading tech. But thats another story.

The bottom line is that I think we'd all agree a dual or quad core CPU is a single CPU as long as it only requires one socket. Same goes for GPU tech.

 

[Ackmed]

Originally posted by: Crusader


The bottom line is that I think we'd all agree a dual or quad core CPU is a single CPU as long as it only requires one socket. Same goes for GPU tech.

There is a distinct difference. This is two PCB's, each with a GPU on it, heatsinks, and memory. Anyone can look at it, and see the two cards, put together.

Dual core CPUs are not even close to being the same in that aspect. The the GPU had two cores, then you could make that connection logically.

But at the end of the day, for consumers it really doesnt matter is its one card, or two slapped together. It works, and works pretty well. You can make an argument either way. The people who it really matters to, is NV. So they can sell it as a "single" card. Which they are doing, along with trying to mislead people with the "1gig" memory statement, but thats another story all together...

The poll says it all. Its about 50-50. But as I said, it really doesnt even matter. Just something else to fuss about on the forums.

 

[beggerking]

Originally posted by: Ackmed

Originally posted by: Crusader


The bottom line is that I think we'd all agree a dual or quad core CPU is a single CPU as long as it only requires one socket. Same goes for GPU tech.

There is a distinct difference. This is two PCB's, each with a GPU on it, heatsinks, and memory. Anyone can look at it, and see the two cards, put together.

Dual core CPUs are not even close to being the same in that aspect. The the GPU had two cores, then you could make that connection logically.

But at the end of the day, for consumers it really doesnt matter is its one card, or two slapped together. It works, and works pretty well. You can make an argument either way. The people who it really matters to, is NV. So they can sell it as a "single" card. Which they are doing, along with trying to mislead people with the "1gig" memory statement, but thats another story all together...

The poll says it all. Its about 50-50. But as I said, it really doesnt even matter. Just something else to fuss about on the forums.

Incorrect. Physically, you see dual core as a single CPU. But when you look inside, you'll see 2 CPUseach with its own cache etc, connect via frontside bus. exactly the same as 2 cpus stacking up side by side.

replace the CPU and the frontside bus connection above with GPU and SLI Connector, you get 7950GX2.

This is a single card solution anyway you spin it.

 

[Wreckage]

It's the fastest single card on the market.

I don't care if it has 12 PCBs and 24 GPUs, if it fits into a single PCIe slot it's just one card. You don't refer to the card as plural. It's not 7950GX2s.

If you want to say it's 2 PCBs or 2 GPUs that's fine. Even 2 cards merged into 1, but it's ridiculous to say it's 2 cards. 2 cards would imply that it needs 2 PCIe slots. It would imply that you could buy one separately from the other.

That hard drive has 2 platters so it?s really 2 hard drives. You got peanut butter on my chocolate, it?s 2 candy bars. That girl is bi-sexual, she?s 2 people. :roll:

 

[thilanliyan]

Originally posted by: Wreckage
That hard drive has 2 platters so it?s really 2 hard drives.

As BFG10K stated, the software will see it as it would an SLI setup so you can't compare it to a hard drive cause does windows see the separate platters?? No it doesn't...it sees it as 1 hard drive...I don't even know why you'd use that pathetic comparison...and chocolate bars and girls?? Oookay.:roll:

 

[nitromullet]

f you want to say it's 2 PCBs or 2 GPUs that's fine. Even 2 cards merged into 1, but it's ridiculous to say it's 2 cards. 2 cards would imply that it needs 2 PCIe slots. It would imply that you could buy one separately from the other

Completely agree with you... I don't even get what the debate is here.

If this thing was a single (really long) PCB with two gpu's on it no one would even argue this point. However, NV decided that they wanted to sell a card that would actually fit in an ATX case (probably helps with sales), so they did it in a stacked manner instead. If you could actually take the two layers apart, plug them into your motherboard, and operate them as two seperate cards I could see the argument that it's not a single card solution. Since this isn't the case, it's a single card.

 

[Wreckage]

Originally posted by: thilan29
As BFG10K stated, the software will see it as it would an SLI setup so you can't compare it to a hard drive cause does windows see the separate platters?? No it doesn't...it sees it as 1 hard drive...I don't even know why you'd use that pathetic comparison

Windows shows a dual core processor as 2 seperate CPUs. If you partition a hard drive windows will view it as seperate drives. blah blah blah. Still one CPU, Still one hard drive and the 7950 is still just one video card.

Originally posted by: thilan29
...and chocolate bars and girls?? Oookay.:roll:

SARCASM